How many types of lure might you carry for a typical bass session? (note the word “type” here, carrying too many variations of the same type of lure?)

I am guessing that many of you here are enjoying finding out that lure fishing for bass is far more varied and widespread than a lot of us could ever have imagined when we first started upon the road towards total addiction. I have a fair few of those washable lure boxes - both the vertical and horizontal slot versions - of which two fit into my HPA Chest Pack side-wearing lure bag (one sits horizontally, one sits vertically). Because I find myself fishing such a wide variety of ground and conditions I have one specific box which I will grab when I go surf fishing, one box I will grab when I go and fish some of the quieter estuary-type stuff, one box for night fishing, then I have two boxes which I will tend to pick up for whatever a “typical” open coast bass session might entail. Of course I will mix and match when required.

We all use the hard and soft lures we know and trust and I am talking about types of lures here rather than the actual lures themselves (go to this page here on my website if you want to know more about the actual lures I tend to fish with). For example, my surf fishing lure box which I would grab when the wind is onshore and kicking up a lively short sea is one of the washable lure boxes with vertical slots. In those slots will be a bunch of lures which for the most part will cast well into a headwind and work in surf conditions generally on a simple straight retrieve. I will of course take some soft plastics with me, but for the most part that will be the horizontal slot box from the two boxes I told you about above which I might take for that “typical” open coast bass session.

Ignoring the fact that I am often messing around with different lures and sample lures and so on, in the surf I am basically going with long-casting metals that will swim at a shallowish depth on a straight retrieve - different sizes/weights and colours of course - plus a metal or two that can be effectively worked more as a jig. I know the lures I trust so I don’t really need to be carrying endless variations of the same type of lure. In that surf lure box would also generally be a couple of hard lures which cast and grip really well, plus something with a true sandeel profile that also gets me out there and might work a bit better if the surf isn’t pounding quite as much as I thought it might be.

So what about the two lure boxes I might take with me for a “typical” bass fishing session on the open coast especially? Because of the variety of ground and conditions I might face I want to give myself options to cover the whole water column, but do I need to be carrying a whole load of different shallow-divers for example, when one or two specific lures in a couple of different colours can do that particular job? I know all the tricks for stuffing as many lures into these two washable lure boxes as possible, but I don’t really need say four types of surface lures, however different they might be to each other. Or do I? What if the sea is bouncing more than I thought? What if my intended location is full of weed and I need to move and fish a very different type of location?

I like to think that over time I have managed to narrow down my hard and soft lure choices - trying stuff out aside - and most importantly I very rarely ever find myself unable to deal with conditions or location change. In my rucksack I am carrying a variety of weedless hooks, either with belly-weight or not, plus with those Balls Clip On weights and some cheb weights I can get my soft plastics to work for me in a bunch of different ways. A few weedless soft plastics rigged on jig heads also give me the option to properly work the bottom if need be. And so on and so on. I do believe in changing lures and/or lure sizes if the fishing is quiet, indeed the only bass of a session a couple of days ago came when I clipped on the smallest soft plastic in my lure box.

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